Fun.
Tomorrow is scheduled to be a special day at my work. We are celebrating a recent merger and there will be a presentation and a barbecue lunch and lots of activities in the afternoon. These were supposed to be outdoor activities but it is March and this is the Great White North and our long-suffering weatherman is sitting in the corner with a dunce hat on because he is not exactly predicting beautiful warm spring-like weather for tomorrow. Well. And then there’s me. And the team I am on. We are the geriatric team. We don’t like to have fun. Oh, that’s not exactly accurate. We do like to have fun and we like to have fun at work. But, for the most part, we are at work to *work* and when work is over we don’t, for example, meet a bunch of people at the bar for a technical staff meeting.
I am not complaining about this scheduled day of celebration. I think it’s great that corporations schedule events like this.
I am thinking back to my old job back in the Dark Ages of the computer world. I was just a kid then and so were some of the (beloved) folks I worked with. We did our jobs but we were constantly harassing each other and I was probably one of the worst perpetrators of the harassment. Rubber band fights? Yes. Paper airplanes? Yes. What else? Well. There was the day when I walked into the “computer room” and my friend Jim Carpenter was telling my friend Manuel, “I like ’em old but I don’t like ’em black.” I stopped in my tracks for a moment until I realized they were talking about BANANAS!!! Kee-reist!
By the end of my time there, I was finally starting to be an adult or whatever it is that I am now. We still had fun there but we had all grown up. We didn’t (usually) shoot rubber bands or fly paper airplanes any more and nobody called anybody else “Monkey Head” or “Igloo Face” any more or pulled chairs out from under someone else as they were trying to sit down. Yes, we were growing up. In the last year I worked there (1994), we had just about the most multi-cultural office I could imagine at the time. We collaborated to run a tight ship. That year was a hard year, one in which we were losing our contract. We kept on track even though some of us ended up losing our jobs and I think we did good work!
I will have fun tomorrow. I probably won’t enter the paper airplane contest. Actually, I think I only know how to make one paper airplane design. Er, maybe I should at least watch that contest… Or bring my roomba in…
March 24th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Our main fun is at lunch these days; we don’t really socialize much outside of that. We have an occasional trip to a bar after work, but we don’t even do the Christmas party anymore. It’s a bit sad. We’re all too wrapped up in our own lives. (or we’re just plain tired and want to go home!)Hope the day is great!!
March 24th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
My previous place of work was “employee owned” which really meant nothing at all. It was still a corporation with all the jargon and idiotic decisions that many corporations make. But there WAS an effort to have social times now and then, during lunches or even office time. The admin staff who had to plan and arrange for all these shindigs worked their asses off and hardly got to enjoy themselves. Not that many people really *did* enjoy themselves anyway! As long as there was food, people showed up, but mostly they’d just all stand around awkwardly and stare at each other. I personally hated it! It felt like such a silly obligation (especially knowing a godawful deadline hung over my shoulders), and yet I was always appreciative of the admin. folks (women, of course) who put all these things on. Chili cook-off, anybody?
March 25th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
I think you should enter that paper airplane contest! Go online and find a design if you don’t want to use the same one you already know. I bet if you enter, you will win a prize!